Monday, August 4, 2014

On the Fairmount Properties and the Email from Pres. Herbst

by Margaret MaurerWilliam Henry Crawshaw Professor of Literature

“Fairmount will not be submitting new
materials to the Planning Board by this coming Monday as originally planned,
but rather, they want to take next week to talk to various members of the
community about the things they heard and want to try to work through.

“I will hold two campus forums for Colgate faculty
and staff about this project, and I am also happy to talk with individuals
outside of these forums if these times are not convenient.”

-- from an
email sent by President Herbst to Colgate employees on August 1

President Herbst’s generous offer to
meet with colleagues on August 10 and 11 will doubtless stimulate productive
discussions, and I for one will be part of one of them. All of us who are concerned about this should
be. But at this time of year and with so
little notice, there can be no expectation that the issues surrounding the
Fairmont Properties proposal for the Wayne property can be resolved. This is especially the case because of two
important facts:

However the
Fairmont Properties proposal is amended, the only reasonable course of action
for the village to take at this point is to deny to issue the special
permit. To grant the permit will set a
precedent for further arrangements of this kind being approved and will tacitly
endorse behind-the-scenes deal-making in advance of any public proposal. Amendments and guarantees will have no legal
force, certainly not for the proposed structure and even less for structures
that might be proposed in the future, citing this proposed one as a
precedent. If dormitory-style student
housing is going to be built in the village, the procedures for contracting
with developers to do so have to be set out in advance in accordance with some
village discussions of the parameters of such a permit. What Fairmont Properties is proposing to
build is clearly prohibited by the zoning ordinance which Fairmont Properties
is seeking to circumvent by special permit; and it would be unseemly for
Colgate employees to be perceived as taking an active role helping the
developer frame guarantees that will have no legal force. I hope that whatever transpires at the
meetings on August 10 and 11, it will be very clear that Colgate employees are
not being enlisted to assist Fairmont Properties in persuading the village to
take an action so very much against the long-term interests of the
village. Some of us live in the village,
and so have a double interest in preserving its integrity; but all of us need
to respect the village and resist being part of the “you” in what a non-Colgate
villager said to me this morning: “Of
course it will happen; you guys can do whatever you want.

One category
of Colgate employees, the faculty, have a subset of concerns relating to the
strategic plan, which it helped to formulate, and other recent discussions
about student life.These concerns can
certainly not be allayed in meetings of Colgate employees convened at a point
in the summer when many faculty are away.